Authors: Mykolas Jakutis, an Assistant to Attorney-at-Law in METIDA, Violeta Sutkiene, an Associated Partner and the Head of the Trademark and Design Division in METIDA

A department store Selfridges located in the United Kingdom has begun their initiative No Noise. One of its directions is the selling of widely known goods without logos. Even though the company seeks to focus the attention on tranquillity and direct the clients away from the wide range of trademark choices which is very characteristic to the market, this initiative also serves as a strengthening tool for trademark design value.

This initiative started back in the 1909 when the first Selfridges shop was opened. The launcher of the shop Harry Gordon Selfridge created a room of silence where busy customers would have the opportunity to rest from the noise and recharge their energy.

In 2013, in addition to the silent room initiative a new campaign was introduced which encompassed the selling of products of high-profile brands, such as, Levi’s, Heinz, Yves Saint Laurent and Clinique with their labels having been dropped off (refer to the picture). The goal of this campaign is to concentrate on the quality and functionality of the goods and not on their packaging or advertisements. However, the initiative to remove labels from the goods also shows that in reality goods’ packaging plays a big and significant role. In any case, goods without labels are recognised by their design, form, colours and the individual characteristics of the packaging. Thus, a conclusion could be drawn from this that the proprietors of the mentioned trademarks trust this initiative and agree to sell their products without labels because the customers will still recognise those products.

It is obvious that this campaign was useful for the trademark proprietors both due to advertising and the possibility to sell non-labelled products. This campaign is also useful for the specialists working in the intellectual property area too, since it helps to show the value and importance of their work, enhances the recognition of goods without logos among the customers.

In this decade almost 720,000 of Community’s designs have been registered, yet this number is still considerably fewer than the one of trademarks – 1,141,414. However, every year the number of registrations increases (~87,000 per year) and the aforementioned initiatives can only help strengthen the need and importance of design protection.